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Sunday, November 29, 2015

#1531: Gayle DeLong

Age of Autism is an antivaccine cesspool if there ever was one, and Gayle DeLong is zealous. DeLong is among
those who refuse to let go of that most cherished and thoroughly refuted piece
of nonsense, that vaccines are causally linked to autism. Originally, the idea
was that mercury in vaccines was the culprit. The fact that thimerosal is safe, has been removed from all childhood
vaccines since the conspiracy was first launched, and was never in the MMR vaccine anyways is not going to deter DeLong, for “although mercury has been removed from many
vaccines, the remaining mercury as well as other culprits such as aluminum and
live viruses may link vaccines to autism.” Heck, she has even published a study
suggesting such a link in a low-tier journal. DeLong is not a scientist but a
faculty member in the Department of Economics and Finance in the Zicklin School
of Business, Baruch College/City University of New York. Nor does she know much
about science, and the study design of the study in question suggests complete
incompetence – or perhaps an attempt to avoid a rigorous design out of a
suspicion that a good study design would fail to give her the results she
wanted (details here and here).
That the referees for the Journal of
Toxicology and Environmental Health failed to notice is good evidence that
the journal is one you should not put a lot of trust in. One Margaret Dunkle
nevertheless took the bait and used DeLong’s article as part of a hysterically idiotic antivaxx article for the Baltimore Sun.

Apparently DeLong also managed to get a commentary in some
journal called Accountability in Research
entitled “Conflicts of Interest in Vaccine Safety Research”.
Oh, yes, there is a conspiracy, no less. Doctors who fail to find an
association between vaccines and autism are scientists at research
institution who know their stuff in the pocket of scienceBig Pharma – as opposed to Andrew Wakefield and concerned parents who torture data into arguing for such a link based on no
understanding of the science whatsoever. She cannot cite a single instance of
distortion of the data in the science she rejects, of course, but she blithely
asserts that FDA is in on the game. The evidence is apparently that they deny a
vaccine-autism connection, and since she thinks there is one there must be a
cover-up. What other possible explanation could there be?

The important point, of course, is that it doesn’t matter
what science or evidence says – DeLong and her merry band of
antivaccinationists don’t need to try to engage with any of that, since all
those scientists are tainted by conflicts of interests and collusions with
BigPharma.
Their theory is thus unfalsifiable.
Therefore they must be correct.

In 2014, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which is, to
emphasize, something we don’t wish on anyone. We still need to mention that
she, rather tastelessly, referred to her condition as “autism-induced breast cancer”. You see, she blames it on having to deal with
her autistic kids (and hence, ultimately, on vaccines). “There is virtually no
cancer in my family, I eat organically,
I exercise, I’m a good weight.” So, caring for children with autism is the only
remaining possibility. Yes, even yours truly is left somewhat speechless both by
the inference and the premises. But the core idea is actually pretty typical of
pseudoscience: As long as you stay healthy and have the right attitude, you
avoid cancer; so if you get cancer … well, never mind that the association
between stress and cancer is at best “weak”. She also used the diagnosis to
launch a pseudoscientific tirade against chemotherapy.

Diagnosis:
A truly horrible person, unfortunately. We’re sure she means well, but it
really doesn’t matter much when your premises are so detached from reality as
DeLong’s pseudoscientific nonsense in fact is.